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Update:Somewhere, and Nowhere
A butterly took wing, lazily gliding into the sky where a stronger breeze pushed it along. Higher and higher the stained-glass colored butterly was hurled, as the breeze joined with a wind that was then overpowered by a stronger gale that smelled of rain, and the sea. Crushed by the forces of the very air it sought to dance upon, the butterfly folded its wings and died. The battered body was whirled round and round by ice-cold whorls of snow as the sky seemed to meet the mountaintops, where the eye of the storm abruptly released the butterfly's body to fall upon a carpet of pristine, soft snow. The sad whithered wings bounced off tiny grains of ice, forming a small ball as it rolled. Down, down, down the tiny snowball spiralled and picked up more mass as it went, first the size of a pea, then a grape, then an orange. The snowball rolled and bounced, skidding off an ice-covered rock where it hurtled through the air and landed unceremoniously across the face of a man dressed in velvety black. Muffling an oath, the man lifted one gloved hand to push away the ice, never noticing the tiny body of the butterfly that had been entombed within the sphere. Beside him, a woman laughed in amusement. There was no real warmth in her laughter as she watched tiny bits of snow try to stick to the man's short, pointed beard. "A neat trick!" she chuckled before turning her gaze to follow that of the man's. From high atop the mountain, it seemed the entire world stretched below them in a quilt of colors patched together roughly by streams, forests, settlements, towns... and of course one city that stood out among the entire landscape. "So." The woman clapped her hands together as she looked down. "Are we ready then?" The man smirked. "Almost. A few more days to ready our forces, and then we strike." With a negligent wave of his hand, he opened a portal of blackness rimmed with lightning. "Coming?" he asked as he made to step through the gateway, holding out one hand to the woman. The woman smiled, this time the warmth reaching her eyes. "Of course," she said as she took the man's hand. She glanced over her shoulder one more time at the view below. Under her breath she said, "He's down there. I know he is." The gate glimmered out of existence as she passed through it, the light winking on her silvered belt as it snapped out of sight. And the frozen butterfly's wings snapped into shards, disappearing into remnants of what was. "And it shall come to pass, in the days when the Dark Hunt rides, when the right hand falters and the left hand strays, that mankind shall come to the Crossroads of Twilight and all that is, all that was, and all that will be shall balance on the point of a sword, while the winds of the Shadow grow." -- The Karaethon Cycle